Fahmida Y. RashidCitrix ShareFile BusinessCitrix ShareFile Business offers an easy-to-use secure managed file transfer (MFT) service in the cloud, with comprehensive data privacy controls, basic file management, and support for local storage, making it extremely versatile for businesses.

Citrix ShareFile Business offers an easy-to-use secure managed file transfer (MFT) service in the cloud, with comprehensive data privacy controls, basic file management, and support for local storage, making it extremely versatile for businesses.

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File sharing is much easier than it used to be thanks to cloud-based services such as Boxand Dropbox. Yet for businesses exchanging exceptionally large files possibly containing highly sensitive data, secure managed file transfer (MFT) software provides the right mix of security and performance. Citrix ShareFile Business, which begins at $16 per month (billed annually), has an intuitive interface letting teams securely share files right away within and outside the company. Citrix ShareFile Business' emphasis on security, ease-of-use, and support for third-party tools easily makes it one of our Editors' Choices for secure MFT tools. It is also one of the few cloud-based MFT players in the space.

Don't mix up MFTs with single-file, person-to-person file transfer tools such as Hightail (formerly known as YouSendIt), or with file storage and sync tools like Box, although there are similarities. MFTs let teams track where files went and who opened them, and control what kind of access the recipient has over the files. MFTs also automate transfers by watching for incoming files. Citrix ShareFile Business' automation tools aren't as robust as the ones offered by our other Editors' Choice, Globalscape EFT Cloud Services, but its file management capabilities are superb.

ShareFile Packages and Free TrialCitrix has four different ShareFile plans: Personal, Team, Business, and Virtual Data Room. The Personal plan, which begins at $20 per month or $16 per month with an annual commitment, supports only one employee account and has a storage cap of 100 GB. Also, the size of the file being transferred cannot exceed 10 GB. The Team plan, which begins at $75 per month or $60 per month with an annual commitment, supports five employee accounts and offers 1 TB of space, with a maximum file size of 10 GB. Additional users would cost $10 per account.

The Business plan, which begins at $125 per month or $100 per month with an annual commitment, comes with five employee accounts. The storage quota says unlimited on the website, but the fine print says the plan starts with 1TB of storage per user and can be increased upon request. Additional users can be added to the Business plan for $12 per account. The maximum file size under the Business plan is 100 GB. The Virtual Data Room plan, which begins at $395 per month or $295 per month with an annual commitment, is an advanced offering and requires you to call to get set up. All the plans offer 24/7 customer support, multi-factor authentication, and activity logs to keep track of how files are being used.

Citrix offers a 30-day free trial of the Business plan, which is quite generous. As plans go, the Business plan would be considered the upper tier, offering quite a few options not available in the entry-level Team plan. These options include user management, archiving, full-text search, and the ability to check files in and out. There are a few caveats, though: You will be capped to 10 GB for both storage and bandwidth. If you exceed either quota, your trial will either be cancelled or switched to a paid account. E-signatures are available for the Team plan and above.

If you eventually opt for a Personal or Team plan, you will definitely notice a difference from the trial as these lower tiers don't offer many of the features which make Citrix ShareFile Business an Editors' Choice. These features include Active Directory integration, folder management, and encrypted email where Citrix ShareFile Business encrypts the body of the message as well. If you decide to go for a lower-cost tier, check the available features to make sure they are sufficient for your needs.

A credit card is not required for the free trial, which makes it easy to try out the software. If you add your card to your account at any time, your account automatically switches to the paid service at the end of the trial. Citrix charges the credit card on file each month so, so even if you commit to the yearly plan, you don't have to pay for the full year at once. However, this also means Citrix does not offer any refunds if you cancel your plan.

Citrix ShareFile Business can get expensive quickly if you have many employees in need of sending files. I see Citrix ShareFile Business as most useful for sending files externally, since there are no limits on the number of clients. Clients, customers, or partners tend to work with a dedicated point-of-contact on projects. So, instead of rolling out Citrix ShareFile Business to everyone in the organization, employees who typically act as the point-of-contact for customers, clients, and partners on projects should have access to Citrix ShareFile Business.

The problem with many MFT providers is the lack of a try-before-you-buy option. That or they require you spend a significant amount of time with account managers before you can even access a demo or evaluation version of the software. Small business owners typically don't have the time to undergo multiple rounds of software evaluation, so anything that helps them test the software quickly is a plus. Linoma Software GoAnywhere MFT Standard or Coviant Software Diplomat MFT Standard are on-premises tools you download and install on your own server infrastructure. Citrix ShareFile Business, much like Globalscape EFT Cloud Services, is a cloud-based MFT provider, which means there is nothing to download and install. Citrix ShareFile Business provides Connectors (which I discuss later) to also use local storage for those files you really don't want leaving your network.

All you need to get started with Citrix ShareFile Business is your name, email address, and a password for the account. You are also prompted to enter the company name, which Citrix uses to create a custom URL for each organization. Users can use this URL, companyname.sharefile.com, to directly access the dashboard.

Getting Around Citrix ShareFile BusinessWhen you log in for the first time, Citrix ShareFile Business launches a tour of the interface, explaining the most frequently used features. The interface is clean and extremely intuitive. The menu across the top is very easy to understand: Home, Manage Users, Share, Request, Admin, My Settings, and Apps. There is a Search box at the top that searches all files saved in your account. The left navigation bar has more detailed options and somewhat resembles the familiar email interface, with various folders like Inbox, Recycle Bin, and File Box. At the bottom, a map shows the tasks you need to complete to become familiar with the interface, which include sending a file, uploading a file, creating a folder, and adding users.

The first thing I did was create some users to use this platform. The Manage Users page had two options, one to create an employee and one to create a client. Remember, the Business plan restricts the amount of users to five employee accounts. There is a four-page process for adding employees, which I found quite tedious. The first page was for entering the email address, and the second page requested profile information such as name and password. This page also defined the employee's access rights, which ranged from basic per-account privileges, such as the ability to create root-level folders and manage client users, to Admin privileges including the ability to view all emails and edit folder templates. You can also set a bandwidth quota on the employee. You follow the same process when adding clients. The final two pages show you how to add users to folders and invite users to the account.

Citrix ShareFile Business maintains two address books. The first is a company-wide address book to which every employee has access, and the second is a personal address book which is unique to the employee. When you create a new employee or client, you have the option to add that person to the shared company address book. You can clone employees or clients so you don't have to manually set the permissions and role-based access controls for each individual. I also liked the distribution groups feature, as it means you can send the files to a group of people at once.

While the creation process could be streamlined by collapsing some of these pages together, I liked having control over the user's access rights. Considering you don't have access to Active Directory on the lower tiers, being able to specify these granular controls is useful.

Citrix uses AES 256-bit encryption to encrypt the files, so they are protected while in transit (i.e., going up and down the servers) as well as while at rest. Until the recipient downloads the files, the files themselves aren't moving anywhere. So you don't have to worry about file copies being stored on mail servers and other intermediary stops.

Sharing Files With Citrix ShareFile BusinessSending a file is straightforward. Click Share and decide if you want to send an email using Citrix ShareFile Business, or if you prefer a link to the file to drop into your own email client. The latter method is useful if you want the "From:" field on the email to come from you and not an automated response from Citrix ShareFile Business. For example, if you have a lot of information you need to include in the email, the link method ensures you can put everything in one place. If you have a Business account, you can encrypt the contents of the email body before sending it.

Citrix ShareFile Business takes tracking very seriously, giving you detailed information in the Activity log and letting you expire links. The shortest available window is one day, but I would have liked to have seen something even shorter, even an hour. I was surprised there was no way to set a file as "View Only" if you don't have the Virtual Data Room plan. The file can be downloaded at least once, so if you do need a View Only mode, you may be better off with Globalscape EFT Cloud Services instead. If you decide to use links, you can force the recipient to log in before uploading or downloading the file. This way, it doesn't matter who gets ahold of the link; if login is required, only authorized employees and clients can see the contents.

There is also a Receive mode, which is helpful in removing the need for a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, which has its own security issues. The Receive mode is where you send an email to someone else with a link to a folder (by default, to File Box) and request files be uploaded to that link. As the employee, you can look inside your File Box folder and see that someone else has pushed the file up to that location. This is a bit similar to how workspaces work in Globalscape EFT Cloud Services.

And don't worry about losing the FTP server. Citrix ShareFile Business lets you connect to the account with an FTP client—a useful feature for automated scripts grabbing files for an FTP server. As a brand-new user, a one-time client, and an employee, the notification email was easy to understand and clear how to sign up or access the file.

Support, Integrations, and ManagementDespite being a cloud service, Citrix ShareFile Business provides a number of mobile and desktop clients for ease of use. You can install an Outlook plug-in, which automatically detects and uploads attachments to Citrix ShareFile Business, providing recipients with a download link. You can also install a desktop widget for Windows (even a Windows 8 app) and Mac OS X, which lets you drag and drop files into the Citrix ShareFile Business folder a la Dropbox. And you can install mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry.

There are also Connectors to third-party storage services such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Box, and Dropbox. You can also use Connectors with your own network shares. Connectors let you use Citrix ShareFile Business with files stored in these locations without downloading and re-uploading the file—which is especially helpful if you don't want certain data to leave your own network for regulatory reasons. The share link URLs and online portal can be customized to match your brand.

Citrix ShareFile Business can locally recognize devices and sync files in the Citrix ShareFile Business account, providing the benefits of a file storage service like Dropbox. If you later decide a device should no longer have the files (because you lost the device, for example), you can just revoke permissions and wipe the files from the device. This level of mobile device management (MDM) is attractive and useful.

Customer support, to put it simply, is stellar. All of the plans offer 24/7 customer support, and I tried calling on weekends, in the middle of the night, and during lunch time to see how quickly I could get assistance. I had access to online chat and a toll-free number, and you can also email your question to them. An online knowledge base and a user forum are also available if you want to find answers to your questions before calling Customer Support. The customer support representatives I contacted on both chat and the phone were thorough and helpful. They explained how to turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) using Google Authenticator, and they explained dynamic watermarking, a feature found only in the Virtual Data Room version. Dynamic watermarking adds a custom watermark to documents so you can track which users printed or saved the file.

Citrix ShareFile Business, Secure and Easy MFTCitrix ShareFile Business handles all of the security considerations (so businesses can focus on who is allowed to see which files) and solves the problem of how those businesses get their files to those individuals. Citrix ShareFile Business' feature list seemed a bit short as compared to our Editors' Choice GlobalscapeSCAPE EFT Cloud Services, or to on-premises offerings such as Coviant Software Diplomat MFT Standard and Linoma Software GoAnywhere MFT Standard. However, Citrix ShareFile Business' strength lies in what it does offer. Its local storage support is useful as well as its ability to delete data from devices.

Citrix ShareFile Business offers a great experience without forcing users to dramatically change their workflow. For that reason, it garners our Editors' Choice designation. For businesses who already use Citrix's other document management tools like Workspace Cloud, Xen, and NetScaler, using Citrix ShareFile Business is just a natural next step.

Citrix ShareFile Business

Bottom Line: Citrix ShareFile Business offers an easy-to-use secure managed file transfer (MFT) service in the cloud, with comprehensive data privacy controls, basic file management, and support for local storage, making it extremely versatile for businesses.

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About the Author

Fahmida Y. Rashid is a senior analyst for business at PCMag.com. She focuses on ways businesses can use technology to work efficiently and easily. She is paranoid about security and privacy, and considers security implications when evaluating business technology. She has written for eWEEK, Dark Reading, and SecurityWeek covering security, core Inte... See Full Bio

Citrix ShareFile Business

Citrix ShareFile Business

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